Sound of Music

Does your heart need a little boost? The Sound of Music performance at the Central Station in Antwerp Belgium might be just the thing. We used to watch the Sound of Music annually when it came on TV when I was growing up. (Thanks to my bro-in-law, Mike, for sharing!)

Suz

Welcome Back

Dear Sunshine,

Thank you for waking up the new apple tree! It's got little bundles of leaves spraying out from the branches and it's just adorable! We love what you've done with the buttery daffodils, they are so cheerful about nodding hello to the neighbors as they pass. We really think you've outdone yourself with the sunbeams this year. They are outstanding! We could soak up their friendly warmth and never get tired of it! (We've got sunblock, but that doesn't mean we don't like you!)

With Easter/Ostara - new flowers all around, new puppies by the stores, baby chicks at the farm store, seed packets, and rain - we got the message about renewal and that you were on your way home for the summer. We celebrated Easter morning with Eggs Golden Rod and the Easter Bunny showered us in caramels and jelly beans. We're pretty keen on having longer days (more daylight). We've missed you and are glad we'll be seeing more of you!

Love, Suz


These tulips are from the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point - I sized this image to be a desktop background. If you'd like to download it just click on the picture to get to the larger image.

Sita Sings the Blues

What movie has some catchy tunes, silouhetted diety commentors, a couple of broken hearts, and is FREE? Sita Sings the Blues, and let me tell you, she's singing them with good reason! This art film makes a good date night flick. The director, Nina Paley, gave it to all of us with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License.

Sita's story is based in legend and is layered with Nina's personal story of love lost. The edgy comments from the deity narrators, the cool art affects, not shown here--like the images of illustrated beating hearts changing to the beat, and the lighthearted spin on a very sad story was told in a different way than the standard studio recipe. And our heroines make it through in their own ways. You can watch Sita Sings the Blues online or download it.

Suz

StoryCorps

StoryCorps were recently in Salt Lake. Eric called to tell me they were accepting reservations that were expected to go fast, so my Dad and I followed the steps shown in the photo above and I interviewed my Dad for StoryCorps. They're adding his story to the Library of Congress. The idea to interview my Dad for StoryCorps started after my dad and I combined efforts to tell his life story as a movie last winter. We gave the DVD "A Life Launched" to our family for Christmas. Making the movie gave me a different understanding of my dad and I wanted to share this with other people too.

During the interview he shared his firework story in which he saw his first chain reaction. When burning firework wicks in an ashtray in his bedroom a spark flew out and landed in the box that held the rest of the fireworks and BOOM! He and his sister had run for it and the story ends with him watching the firemen from the yard below, standing in the midst of all the other neighborhood kids, and watching the firemen throw his Sunday suit out the window. He talked about a sailboat race that led him under the Golden Gate bridge, his career as an aeronautical engineer (aka rocket scientist) and some of the projects he worked on like the Polaris missiles. He talked about being a "human computer" during his college days spending hours on calculations and a few decades later watching the computer spit out the same type of results (from rocket motor tests) in real time. He talked about loosing his first child to Leukemia and being an "aero bracero" and moving where the jobs went.

This was only a 40 minute interview, but I'm glad some of his story (at least to this point) has been saved.

Suz